Here's How Steve Jobs Dealt With Negative Press and Avoided Brand Disasters The best way to grow your bank account is to avoid major withdrawals. The same can be said about your brand.

In parts 1 and 2 of this article series, we introduced Steve Jobs' concept of brand bank accounts and what it means for startups and small businesses. We also talked about how to ensure making consistent deposits in your brand bank account. But no matter how much you deposit in your bank, your balance will only remain healthy if you minimize unplanned withdrawals.

Let's examine how your team can deal with negative press and avoid brand challenges becoming brand disasters.

Here's What to Do When Trust Starts Dwindling

Maintaining a positive brand bank balance requires more than consistent deposits. No matter how much you deposit, the balance will only grow if you avoid withdrawing too much.

Too many withdrawals can diminish your company's reputation. Just like some deposits are smaller than others, small withdrawals are easy to miss. Forgetting to reply to an email may seem not very important at all, but it will leave a bad impression on the person who was waiting for the reply.

Launching a faulty product or a product that is not quite ready also erodes trust and can take a long time to rebuild. That has happened to Apple with the launch of the iPhone X, for example. Luckily for the company, its brand bank balance was large enough to accommodate the withdrawal, and it started rebuilding the balance soon after.

Managing Trust Crises

While Apple appears to have been successful in managing reputational and product-based crises over the years, another household name has been struggling for the past six years: Boeing. In 2018, one of Boeing's newly launched 737 MAX 8 passenger airliners crashed in Indonesia. Another 737 MAX 8 followed a few months later, in Ethiopia. Both events are examples of withdrawals.

Related: Crisis at 30,000 Feet: Grading the CEO Responses to Boeing's Mid-Flight Blowout

The manufacturer, once synonymous with state-of-the-art engineering, initially attempted to shift blame to the airlines before the entire fleet was grounded due to safety concerns. As investigations were being carried out, they brought to light a series of questionable decisions and practices during the planes' certification process. Arguably, the grounding of the entire fleet, following the attempts at shifting blame, and the investigators' findings eroded trust in Boeing.

Since then, the company's failings have been detailed in the 2022 documentary 'Downfall.' Even today, Boeing struggles to rebuild its reputation as problems mount with the MAX 8's successor MAX 9. The company has come in for serious criticism, accusing it of prioritizing profits over safety.

Boeing may be an extreme example, but as a case study, these events highlight several mistakes made that led to sizable withdrawals:

• Product problems that led to the crashes of the 737 MAX 8 planes
• Attempts to shift blame to individual airlines rather than taking responsibility
• Questionable business practices making passenger and crew safety less of a priority

While consumers have limited powers to choose the type of plane they travel on, Boeing is seeing the consequences of these large withdrawals as its main rival Airbus has been able to outperform Boeing for sales.

Related: Read the Full Memo Boeing CEO Sent to Staff Announcing He Is Stepping Down

Lessons For Small Businesses

As a small business, one of the biggest lessons is to learn to identify those small withdrawals and prevent them from happening. Few startups have the potential to cause as much damage as a crashing passenger airliner, but even small problems can cause your business to fail.

Preventing withdrawals starts with being consistent: no matter the size of your business, work to ensure consistently high product and service quality. Applying the same regularity to your brand messaging and every interaction with potential customers further builds trust.

Having said that, it is equally important to realize that mistakes will happen, leading to withdrawals. According to sources about Apple, Steve Jobs pushed for transparency and honesty when things went wrong. Use this as a guiding principle for your business, and never be afraid to apologize to customers when things go wrong.

Long-term customers will judge a business and the people behind it more on how they act when a problem occurs. Honesty builds trust, even if it feels like the harder choice at the time.

How to Maintain a Positive Brand Perception

Learning lessons from other brands is one way of maintaining a positive brand perception. However, startups and small businesses can work proactively to minimize withdrawals.

Taking customer feedback seriously is a great way of shoring up deposits. Once your company has launched a product that customers have started using, those customers' experiences should be treated as an invaluable source of information for the brand team. Even with the most extensive product testing, it is impossible to predict every potential snag or area for improvement. Customer feedback can fill that gap.

More from the Author: How to Master the Art of Brand Messaging With Clear and Consistent Communication

Another key component of maintaining a positive brand perception is to remain relevant to your target audiences. My company, Valux Digital, has achieved this by regularly offering valuable insights into marketing and public relations trends and contributing to industry conversations. Depending on your industry, your business can establish a similar position and become a thought leader and an authority in its field, leading to large deposits into your brand bank account and protecting you from unplanned withdrawals that could not only damage but threaten the future of the company.